 Where are you from? Papanga. Papanga. Papanga is known for the food. Yes. That's why I'm in the food business. Ah. Filipino places. All the workers here, they're so full of energy. Yeah, this is Joe from the Philippines, Patanga City. Historic Filipino town, or Hi-Fi, is one of the oldest ethnic enclaves in LA. Living in LA for several years, we hadn't really been there before, so we linked up with our Filipino friend Ryan Benson to check out everything from authentic bakeries to cafeterias, to supermarkets, to Instagram-able hipster spots, and of course, barbecue. All right you guys, we are getting fresh pandasal in the morning here in Historic Filipino town. Look at the whole. What do we got here, Ryan? All right guys, so we have their best seller right here. This is the Hopiababoy. So this has onion inside of it. It's kind of like the Filipino version of an empanada. Yo, if you guys are feeling this video so far, hit that like button, click subscribe, and turn on your notifications. For the algorithm, Hopiababoy. Kind of has a sweeter taste. Kind of like a doughy texture to it. Wow, with a sweet onion. A sweet onion. Not only do you have like Hopiababoy, which is like onion, but you have Hopiabube, or Hopiamongo, which is mung bean, or Hopiamongo. Wow. Really sweet and smooth. Very smooth. I prefer it. Yeah. Pondissalle. So it has more of the crust of a French bread, but it definitely has that sweetness like a Hawaiian roll. Right. Everybody, would you guys like to coconut and jam it up? Yo, that's good. That's really good. Wow. That's a thick cake. What is that? Is that mochi? Yeah, I've never seen that. You can literally see the sugar crystals. The binka. Can you feel that stickiness in your mouth? Those strings that you saw, that was just straight sweetness. Here, I'm going to make a little boat. We just used the pondissalle, like a little spoon or a pelican gull. It's actually really good. Wow. That is super good. Super strong chicken flavor, great tender chicken pieces, five out of five. I got to give it a five out of five. All right, guys, we got to go on to the next spot. Our next stop on our historic Filipino town, Hi-Fi Crawl, is just right next door. We're right here at Dollar Hits. It serves super authentic Filipino food. Skewers, barbecue, lunch style buffet, Dollar Hits. This plaza was started by a family from Papangas. That's a city 55 miles north of Manila that's famous for its cuisine. They say Papangas has better seafood while Manila has better beef steak, aka beef steak. But if you talk to someone from Papangas, they'll let you know how proud they are of everything they serve because it's a reflection of the rich food culture that's unique to their city. Yo, you guys, we have sort of moved from Filipino breakfast to Filipino lunch. With the creation of historic Filipino town, it really became an enclave for Filipinos in LA because you have communities outside of LA like West Kilvina, Chino Hills, Eagle Rock, but there was nothing really inside LA that had its own sanctuary for Filipino people. Yo, I think for me, the first thing that I had to try was the shrimp jackfruit. Go for it, go for it. Jackfruit sometimes is used as a meat substitute. I have to go for these mini crabs first. I know not everybody would choose this, but I was so intrigued by them because I didn't know Filipinos ate this to be honest. I think I'm going to go with the bangus, the milk fish. For the people who haven't had milk fish, how do you describe it for them? I mean, it's white fish. It has a lot of bones. The way that it's cooked with the tomatoes, the onions, and all the herbs, it helps really round out the flavor. Yeah, first fish. First fish. This is a really salty kind of fish, but this broth that it's been cooked in, wow, it doesn't have so much flavor in it. Alright, chicken adobo. The good hallmarks of our chicken adobo is having a good quality soy sauce, good quality vinegar, cooked over a long period of time so that chicken cooks down. Alright guys, I'm going to try this goat. For me so far, this and the adobo, super hit. That goat's good. I knew that goat was good when I looked at it. I looked at our sauce. Anytime you have a Filipino fried skin dish, you got to dip it in the vinegar. Fried chicken skin. It's funny, my grandfather, my Lolo, out of nowhere, will be sitting in the car and he'll be like, whoop, has a bag of chicharron. He'll finish it and he'll go, whoop, has another one. A chicharron magician. But it's a perfect snack, man. It's salty, it's crunchy, and then you dip it in the vinegar and you got this like nice little tart. Okay, okay, of course, this is kind of like a tradition on our channel. Every time we have a Filipino food episode and we are able to have bulut, we got to do it. So you can just go like this, crack it open. Just slurp it, get the juice. It's so good. I don't know what I'm looking at but it tastes alright. We are going back to your regular standard programming. Right, right, right, question. What's up? What is this? I thought these were big fish balls. They kind of look like dongos, Japanese. This is going to be like a fried sweet rice that's been drizzled, I believe, in honey. So I would say this is like the Filipino version of mochi. Wow, that's thick, man. I think I can eat one of those. It was almost like a low mattress. Memory foam. Hell yeah. Sleep on that. I was going to say, I've never eaten memory foam before. Yeah, well if you haven't, you know Ryan, you're obviously not as experienced. Alright guys, so we're going to check out two more spots. We're going to check out a Filipino grocery and then we're going on to a more hipster, more modern version of Filipino food, a little bit down the street. And then we're going to come back to Dollar Hits and get some Filipino barbecue skewers. Ooh, I'm excited for that. Onwards with the journey. Let's go. Alright guys, so we're here at our next spot. We're at a Filipino grocery at Temple Plaza owned by the same people as Dollar Hits, which is kind of funny because as we were eating in Dollar Hits, we said, oh, we want to go to the market. Do you want the fucking grocery too? Yeah. Okay. The lady who owns Dollar Hits came and walked us in. Yo, these ladies are kind of like, they're killing it in high-five. Right? They're holding their bosses. They're boss ladies. Temple Seafood Market. Let's go. Alright, so what we got over here is the vinegar section. All types of sukkah. All different types of sukkah. This is the sukkah, the white vinegar that I'm used to at home. I actually never seen so many varieties of Filipino vinegar. This is a baguong. This is like a shrimp paste. You put like a little bit in like stews or something to kind of give it a little extra oomph. You don't really see this in many other stores. I think it's pretty unique to hear. They have a literal jewelry store in the middle of the market. Not only that, they have clothing for sale as well. One of the biggest things that I've noticed about my Lola growing up, she's very big into jewelry. She would always buy like different little pieces, whether it's like stones or like things like that. This kind of comes like right into the culture. So I'm Elvira, the owner here. This store is a Filipino store around in Filipino community. Do you think Filipino town has the best Filipino food in the L.A. area? Of course. I am number. You see in L.A. times, the dollar is almost I think three, number three. Why is the food in Pampanga better than Manila? Because when I'm small, the people there is cooking and cooking and cooking. They are famous in Pampanga. And then when you go to the Philippines, visit Pampanga. We are known for using cheap cuts of meat and making them taste really good. Pork snout, beef tripe, pork ear, pork heart, chicken liver, fish ball. A lot of the stuff that we see here, we're going to try later on at Dollar Hits when they barbecue it up on the grill. Alright you guys, we are going to take a break from the Pampanga Plaza. We're just going to go down the street in Hi-Fi, historic Filipino town. Check out how the second generation Filipino-Americans are flipping their cuisine to make it a little bit more hipster-elevated fusion while still paying tribute to their roots. Spoon and Pork. Now we're meeting two chefs that immigrated from the Philippines. They're bringing a modern, aesthetically-focused California twist to the food they grew up with. Alright guys, so we're here at our next spot. We're at Spoon and Pork. It was kind of a funny little play on words. Wait, because a lot of Filipinos say they're P's. They're F's like P's. Exactly. Spoon and Pork. Spoon and Pork. And they serve a lot of Pork here. Here they kind of do a more modernized take on Filipino food. They still pay homage to its roots, but they do it in a little bit more upscale fashion. Let's check it out. So modern Filipino comfort food is what me and Jay grew up with. We grew up in the Philippines and these are like the flavors that we grew up with. This is our comfort food. That's the reason why we did a modern take on Filipino food. Just so we can introduce this flavors to everyone. And it helped a lot that we actually don't have any formal training. So we didn't go to school. We weren't scared. We didn't care. We didn't have any rules. So before the restaurant, for a year and a half, we're doing our part, trying to get our food out there. That is the plan, to get Filipino food out there, to get it recognized. Like you want people, like probably, it's going to happen probably in the next five to ten years, where people will be like, yo, let's go have Filipino food, you know? Right now, it's not yet at that point, but we want it to be like how Thai food and Chinese food and Japanese food is. That's probably it. San Miguel light. Not as full body. Got it. Is it going to be the same one twice? No. No tricks. No tricks, man. Wait, what? Just guess which one it is, man. I'm going to say, this one's San Miguel, and then the first one's Red Warps. Ah! You came in with the clutch, three points at the end. You got it at the end. You got it. You got it. All right, you guys, we have got an incredible spread here at Scoot & Pork. The chefs came out, they told us their story. Out of any of the Filipino restaurants that we've been to, like on our food journey, I think this is the most fusion Filipino item I've ever seen. Pork belly adobo nigiri. You have a little bit of sriracha on top. You have the Japanese furikake with the pork adobo. I think it's a perfect combination. I think my next thing up is the eggplant and salata. You guys, I guess normally this comes more... It's chopped up. Yeah. Real quick, guys, I love how in this restaurant they don't give you a knife. It's spoon and pork. In Filipino culture, your knife is your spoon. Eggplant and salata. That eggplant has a really smoky flavor that comes out from being bar... I don't know if it's barbecued, but it's super, super smoky. It comes out really, really prevalent. Shroom salpico. Oh, wow. There's so much flavor that comes out. You can tell there's a little bit of vinegar inside. The chives really kind of bring like a bright kind of erby taste to it as well. Guys, let's go with the premier dish, the patata. This is like their crispy pata take, where it's pretty much covered in chili garlic sauce. Now, New York Times has rated this one of the top 15 dishes in all of L.A. Patata sundaes! Petita. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my goodness. This is the one. My eyes are closed right now. I'm transported to the streets of Queens, Woodside. I'm standing, walking with my Lolo. We're walking to Iohawangeng Crispy Pata. This might be the best crispy pata I've ever had. They pretty much took the best elements from Thai chili wings. And then they put it on a delicious crispy pata. Mmm. And it just is like a whole new thing that's just amazing. You know when I go in, I gotta get another one. Mark, five out of five. That was one of the dishes that was clear, five out of five. Hold up. Yo, I'm super excited. This looks like that kind of upscale vegan dish that you would buy out Westside for like 20 bucks. But this is the Filipino version. Oh, my God. You guys, I mean, there's a reason that Spoon & Pork has a four out of five on Yelp with like 500 reviews. For a vegan Filipino dish, when would you have thought you would eat a good vegan Filipino dish? I didn't even think I'd ever eat a vegan Filipino dish at all. It can be done. David, you know, a pork is just really thick when you can just eat it off the plate. Yeah, that is true. The Lugal, the kanji at Mom's Bake Shop is really good. So this has like pretty big shoes to fill. Yeah. We have our boy, Danny, cooking it up with the house sauces right now. I am from Westside, man. East of Westside, man. This is our cinema. It's a spice chili vinegar dip. And then our calamansi sriracha. It's a Filipino citrus sriracha blend that we both make in the house. Awesome, man. Modernized Filipino rice porridge. Yo, everything here has an elicited um. So I feel like this is more towards the Chinese style kanji. It's a little bit of a more cleaner um, porridge, but I like how simple it is and then the saltiness of that chicken skin. Spoon and pork is one, easily one of my favorite Filipino restaurants right now that I've ever had. I gotta give the whole restaurant a 5 out of 5. Wow. And I rarely ever do that. This is my favorite spot that we've been to on any of our food journeys for Filipino food. Hands down, come here for amazing Filipino modern food. You can't beat it. We got one more stop on this food tour. We're gonna head back to Dollar Hits to get some barbecue skewers. So before we go back to Dollar Hits, back to the historic Filipino town, we're gonna see 200-pound cameraman John try this crispy petita. No joke, spoon and pork was amazing. They deserve a lot of credit for taking risks and trying to push culture forward in uncharted waters. All right, you guys, we have arrived back at Dollar Hits. As you can see, they have the grill set up now. So I've never barbecued my own Filipino skewers ever in my life, and this is an amazing way to end off the video. And we got the Filipino music banging. Bangin'. We have chicken feet. We have chicken butt. We have pork ear. We have pork intestine. I'm really excited to go and put this on the grill. All right, guys, I got us a full gambit right here. We got 16 different skewers. We're gonna cook it ourselves and then sit down and eat some Filipino food. All right, I'm learning from my man right here from watching. And when you come here, better take a shower. You gotta wash your clothes after this. Yeah, yeah, this is my dog clothes. So now we're gonna put some stuff on the grill here. So we got the pig ear here. This is the helmet. We got some chicken feet. We're gonna get a nice sear on everything here. Make sure it gets that charcoal taste, and then we're gonna flip it over. And then I'm gonna serve it to you guys. All right, hell yeah. Let's get this barbecue off. What makes it really cool about Dollar Hits? This really kind of brings it back to its traditional roots, like as street vendors in Manila or another part of the Philippines where everybody's kind of going from vendor to vendor getting different types of food. So this is really cool to kind of bring it back home. Why are you fanning it? Does that make it hotter? Yeah, so you buy or it needs oxygen in order to burn. So you're really trying to stoke the coals and kind of bring more heat. And it's even sort of like a gregarious activity too. You got to share it. Yeah, I mean, that's what Filipino culture is all about, sharing food. It's a community. Okay, we each in our hand have the skewer of choice. Dollar Hits. It's a dollar. It's a hit. In historic Filipino town. Dollar good. Of course, skewer is good. This is long and easy. Wow. At the end of the day, we had only spent a few hours in high-five, but it felt like I had learned so much about authentic Filipino culture. It was almost like we got zapped and transported to the Philippines for a moment. One thing I did take away for sure is the old school and new school styles are both in good hands. What stands out to you about the high-five journey that we just went on? We got to experience Filipino food in so many different types of ways. We got to try pastries. We got to try bread. We got to try traditional food. And then we got a more elevated take on the food. And then we finished it all off with barbecue, which is something that both of you guys have never had before. So I think you really got the full spectrum of Filipino food and culture today. To me, everybody's been super welcoming. I learned a lot. I mean, I have, we had a conversation with the guy previously who was grilling because he looked like really Chinese. I was like, are you Chinese? He goes, well, I consider myself Filipino, but I'll just tell you this. There's people in my family that have the whole range of looks. No matter how you look, if you're Filipino, you're Filipino and you're like family together. And you can all get together and enjoy the same food. Come to historic Filipino town, experience a culture that is revolved around food. We sit down and we eat food together. We share food. And as a culture, I think there's nothing like it in this world. All right, you guys, in the comment section below, make sure first of all, you give us a big thumbs up. And then number one, let us know what is a Filipino food that we need to try that we didn't show today. And number two, what is another ethnic neighborhood around America that we got to check out. All right, everybody, thank you so much for watching that video. Check out Ryan's information down below. We are in historic Filipino town in LA and it was all love. So until next time, we out. Peace. He's talking about how everybody was going for the sardines and the rice. Even the 50 sardines or the 50 sardines almost 30 minutes. Oh, gone in 30 minutes. Yeah. Wow. Do I look beautiful? What's up? Do I look beautiful? Yeah, you do. Of course. If I'm not beautiful, don't tell me.